1 September 2013 - Psyche Bend, Murray River, Mildura, Victoria

Today is Father’s Day in this part of the world, or at least in Australia and New Zealand; I remembered and sent a text to my father this morning from South Australia and here I am sitting by the Murray River in the State of Victoria, looking across at the opposite banks in New South Wales, mid-afternoon, having lost a half hour in the transition.

My husband is down at the water’s edge, washing the potatoes and I am listening carefully for cries of assistance. Access is not easy and he is not as agile as he once was when he used to clamber around roofs and scaffold structures during his working life. He has just told me that he has lost a potato. Perhaps it will be caught up in the propellers of one of the many fizz boats plying the waterway? Perhaps it will be carried on through to the Southern Ocean via the long route through South Australia? So much for quarantine! Meantime I have large black ants crawling about, surveying this as I write, firstly onto paper to be later transcribed when I boot up the computer.

We were away from Paringa by 9.30 am old time, passing along the high banks of the maze of waterways that is the Murray from Paringa to Berri and beyond. Soon across the border, quarantine leaving South Australia was painless but fifty kilometres from Mildura at Cullulleraine were signs telling us to dispose of any fruit we might be carrying. So you stock up on fruit in South Australia’s Fruit Fly Free Zone and then have to ditch it even as you continue through to Victoria’s Fruit Fly Free Zone? Well, bugger me!

Cullulleraine is the only settlement of any size at all one encounters on the 135 kilometre trip across to Mildura and apart from the immediate surroundings of that lakeside settlement, where grapes and almonds, and further development of the same, the land is all cropped. Straight roads and a hundred kilometres of crops, the only variation being the deterioration of the roads once you enter Victoria.

We arrived in Mildura on lunchtime and parked up near the sound shell where, last year, we had spent several afternoons in a row enjoying the free Country Music concerts. Today the scene was very different although still quite busy. As I have said on numerous occasions, Australian families know how to make the most of good weather on non-work days.

It is four weeks short of one year since we were last here in Mildura and no less sunny. Today young women, and those not so young, have been seen clad in strappy sundresses and even strappier sandals, boys barefoot and boaties in as little as possible.

Our camp at Psyche Bend

After buying some more fresh provisions at the Coles supermarket, we came on over to the Kings Billabong Reserve but found the area closed, currently undergoing construction works. Plan B was to continue on down to Psyche Bend four kilometres on rough dirt road but down to numerous fabulous spots along the Murray River. We called in here last year to admire the old pumping station, part of the much admired Chaffey Irrigation System 

We will be very comfortable here, soon the river traffic will abate and we will be left to the jumping fish, noisy miners, kookaburras and of course, the pesky ants.

Resumed later: The Man next door drifted over with his dog while I was deep in a reread of a Margaret Drabble novel  and could not drag himself away. It was all very pleasant beneath the gums in the company of the multitude of birdlife. Chris drifted out at one point with a potato in his hand to discuss some menu matter but retreated after a while with no resolution. Finally the Victorian decided his wife might be wondering where he had got to.

Retreating from the river bugs, Chris suggested we crack the Jesuit’s Gewürztraminer and so we did with the window thrown open as far as we could, screens secure, and watched the slow flow of the magic Murray River.